Weather: ☁️🌤️🌤️☀️⛅
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪🥪 (5 out 5, great burger in Pappenheim)
Track: 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪 (4 out of 5, great forest trail with beautiful views over villages and the 12 apostle rock formation)
Milestone: 2250 km!
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, flat spot in the forest)
Name of followed trail: Main Donau weg, Altmühltal panorama weg
I wake up a lot more rested than yesterday. We start with a pretty walk through the fields back to the forest. After 3 km we celebrate our 2250 km point. We’re on 1/3 of the total distance… It’s still an incomprehensible distance to the both of us. But as our pilgrim Mirko said (and Rein also suggested: just keep walking!
It’s a really pretty trail today and we both agree that we don’t know why thru hiking these E paths isn’t more popular. Especially when we see a sign that tells cyclists to give way to hikers! What more does a hiker need? 😉
In Treuchtlingen we celebrate the 2250 km with cake and bretzels. From there we walk through a nice forest to Pappenheim.
In Pappenheim we first visit the Kneipp wellness bath. Germany has a lot of these baths where you need to walk through the water. Nice and refreshing! Or rather…. freezing cold 🥶. But very nice when you’re done!
We meet an Italian family here and have a chat with them. The guy we speak to is very interested in our journey. It’s good to talk to enthusiastic people about our walk. When we say goodbye, we gamet an Italian sandwich as a gift. ♥️
With clean feet, we go for lunch in Pappenheim. We have a great burger here. Walking through the town we see a Fiat 500 in a modified model. It looks very odd and Mark has a lot of questions about it. We read up on it and this modification is popular here because it makes it legal for 16 ys old with a motorcycle license to drive it.
After Pappenheim we walk the prettiest trail we walked in Germany zo far! A narrow forrest trail goes up the hill and across a meadow with beautiful views across the Altmühl valley. It continues through a more rocky area and gives views over the 12 apostles, limestone cliffs that are a reminder that this area was sea once, millions of years ago.
The pretty trail goes above the cliffs and down to a Biergarten. Good place for a stop! I’m enjoying the slower pace we’re having these two days. Sometimes it’s nice to slow down. The disadvantage is that you get to your campspot quite late, and you still need to make dinner 🤔.
After the refreshments it’s another 5 km to Mörnsheim, where we get our water for the night. We go across the hill and pass a quarry. We get the water at a restaurant, and when we see the menu, it’s really tempting to order dinner there. We give in to this temptation and order a good and tasty regional meal.
After dinner it’s only 2 km further, but it’s up the hill. Quite steeply up…
At the top we find a nice spot in the forest where we make coffee and tea, before we go to bed. What a great day of hiking!
I turn on my phone to write this blog and see kind words from our friends and family, and even a video message. Thanks for the support everyone!
And we even found other E8 hikers on trail (actually, they found us..)! We have 2 fellow hikers in this same area on the E8. Miriam and Ger are walking in smaller sections and hike in a different way, but we now are only a few kilometers apart. Maybe we’ll even meet. Thanks Miriam and Ger, for reaching out through the website.
I feel a lucky person. We had a great day of hiking with beautiful views, a fun meeting with the people on trail and we get love and support from the people around us. Happy hikers indeed.